Daily Digest 1/24 - The Politics Of Paranoia, When The Water Turned Brown

Economy

The phrase "paranoid style in American politics" was coined by the late historian Richard Hofstadter. He defined the Paranoid Style, "an old and recurrent phenomenon in our public life which has been frequently linked with movements of suspicious discontent."

In a country that at its best radiates an infectious optimism, it is interesting how often fear has stalked the American landscape.

This study was followed up by a review from Jerome Capaldo and Alex Izurieta at Tufts University. In a study titled “Trading Down: Unemployment, Inequality and Other Risks of the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement,” Capaldo and Izurieta claim their study uses a more realistic model than past analyses. Specifically, the researchers state that their model incorporates effects on employment that were previously excluded from TPP calculations.

"The speculation is the message will continue to be dovish from the Federal Reserve and the four rate increases they have been talking about is not realistic, so that is being viewed as a positive" for stocks said Ken Polcari, Director of the NYSE floor division at O’Neil Securities in New York.

But as the funding of political campaigns by a select group of billionaires comes under fire in the US - from Democratic candidate Bernie Sanders on the left and Donald Trump on the right - Mr Scaramucci unapologetically makes the case for the wealthy intervening in the political process.

Appearing before the US Senate on Wednesday, Sopko said he had "not been able to find credible evidence showing [the task force's] activities in Afghanistan produced the intended economic growth or stabilisation outcomes that justified its creation".

"On the contrary, [its] legacy in Afghanistan is marred by unfinished, poorly planned, and ill-conceived projects".

As we have noted in this space many times, the seemingly large financial penalties levied on Wall Street firms for illegal activity are not so large, in the context of those firms' budgets: The fines are generally less than the revenue that the firms generated by engaging in the often fraudulent practices in the first place. As The Huffington Post noted in a report on the recent settlement...

Before going any further, I believe nearly ALL of what we are seeing is centered by and on the “petrodollar”. Will it survive or be replaced? In my opinion it is no longer “if”, but “when” and by “what” will it be replaced with? Just over the last two weeks we have seen three very important yet interrelated events. First, the sanctions against Iran in place over the last 35 years were lifted. Along with this comes the ability for Iran to sell oil and they will now have access to up to $150 billion worth of assets and accounts previously frozen as reported by many credible non-government sources.

After reading it, I came away with one (fairly obvious) conclusion: keeping the republic safe is hard and crazy complicated. Anyone who has followed current events on drone strikes, surveillance, and encryption, and other essential issues at the forefront of modern America—and wants the entire inside baseball play-by-play to go with it—will love this book.

For more than a year after an emergency manager — appointed by Mr. Snyder to oversee the city — approved a switch from the Detroit system to water from the Flint River to save money, workers assigned to manage the city’s water system failed to lower lead risks with a simple solution: adding chemicals to prevent old pipes from corroding and leaching metals like lead. Disagreements and miscommunication between state and local officials about what federal law requires of so-called corrosion control measures further delayed fixing the problem, the documents show.

With Flint as a potent warning, confidence in public agencies has collapsed here after the gas leak. Unconvinced by health department reassurances, residents have turned for guidance to lawyers who are spearheading lawsuits. And the eroding public trust now poses its own threat to the community: Of the thousands of families who have fled the area, many say they are not sure when they will feel safe returning, if ever.

In February, the State Water Resources Control Board will release its long-awaited revised Substitute Environmental Draft, laying out how much water it wants to flow down the Tuolumne, Stanislaus and Merced rivers to the ocean and the board’s projections of the costs of those increased flows to our region. Such reports are number-heavy and a bit boring, but stick with us because the state plans to take money out of every pocket in the Northern San Joaquin Valley.

Gold & Silver

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Emergency rooms are health care's front line - in the United States, nearly 45 out of 100 people visit an ER in any given year. But there's an issue brewing behind the scenes in emergency medical facilities, one that can't be fixed by a simple stitch or bandage. A new study published in the journal Academic Emergency Medicine shows that drug shortages in ERs across the United States increased by more than 400 percent between 2001 and 2014.

The study analyzed data from the University of Utah Drug Information Service, which receives drug shortage reports submitted through a public site administered by the American Society of Health-System Pharmacists. Two practicing emergency room physicians assessed whether the reported shortages had to do with drugs used in ERs, then looked at whether they were associated with lifesaving or acute conditions.

Of the nearly 1,800 drug shortages reported between 2001 and 2014, nearly 34 percent were used in emergency rooms. More than half (52.6 percent) of all reported shortages were of lifesaving drugs, and 10 percent of shortages affected drugs with no substitute. The most common drugs on shortage are used to treat infectious diseases, relieve pain, and treat patients who have been poisoned. Though the number of shortages fell between 2002 and 2007, they've risen by 435 percent between 2008 and 2014.

That's nothing less than a public health crisis, said Jesse Pines, director of the office for clinical practice innovation at George Washington University School of Medicine & Health Sciences and the study's senior author. Shortages "are real, they're happening, and they're getting worse," he said. Pines, who practices emergency medicine, said that though emergency rooms are implementing things like providing posters with quick alternative drug options, there's no obvious way to cut shortages.